Making Round Hay Bales
Making hay is one of the fun things about the farm … unless you get hay fever, like I do!
For the last few weeks I’ve been sneezing my head off and will continue to do so until harvest has finished.
Rye grass, grain dust, normal dust and ‘fines’ (minuscule particles of hay) send me into a world of itchy throats, weeping eyes and sneezes!
But I still love watching the hay being made and if I keep up with my medication, I can actually rake the hay for the boss.
The baler trundles along eating the rows of freshly-raked hay. Inside, the machine wraps it into a tight bale before covering it with netwrap and flicking it out the back.
When it looks like this, the cows do their utmost to break into the paddocks or storage facility!
Wow that takes me back to when I was a girl and we did the haying. But we had rectangular bales so these big rolls always look odd to my eyes! Best part to me was when the farmer let us girls “drive” the tractor.
Hi Fleur,
Congrats on getting some hay done. I find that if I cut grass (wheat and rye) out of my diet, my hayfever magically disappears. Might be worth a try for a couple of weeks.
Yes, it’s the Ryegrass that does it for me too, Marian. Unfortunately because we cut a lot of pasture hay (and yes, the above photos are of oats!) that’s one of the staples, along with clover. If only we could cut it out!
Veronica, we make rectangular bales too – the small ones and use them to go into the mix we make up for the feedlot. I can understand how weird they look because I think the huge rectangular ones made for expert hay looks weird!
Ha ha – I meant cut it out of what I eat (not the cows!). It’s a choice between the bakery and the hayshed for me.
My family has always done the square bales, but the round ones seem to be most efficient to me. You lift the rectangular bales and throw them one by one on the truck. You lift them again to load them on the elevator. You lift them once more to stack them in the barn. Lift them one by one to throw back outside when you are ready to feed. Rectangular bales are a lot of work…
Unfortunately, to make the switch, you’d be buying a lot of new equipment, and that takes money.
I guess I never realized that you made hay there. I didn’t think that it got cold enough. I am learning a lot about your country.